For the sake of honesty and fairness, I do want to say that I do not always have bad experienced with suppliers or delivery companies when I order supplies. While this blog has mostly been moaning or targeting companies that have been doing a bad job, there have been a few companies in Manchester and London that have been doing a really good job. They already know that the brown packaging that many companies use is inefficient and ineffective for the transport of large cargo, and instead use a variety of other materials to help.

A lot of the companies that I use right now use alternative packing supplies. One of the ways that they are now packaging long cargo is using things like old polyester and massive amounts of bubble wrap to transport the supplies instead. This doesn’t always protect completely from damages and little scratches, but it does a lot to make sure nothing comes back broken or smashed.

Another piece of material that some companies I have seen use are the materials that are in bed mattresses. I’m not entirely sure what it’s called because I’m pretty sure it’s just cottons or string or something, and obviously it doesn’t include the springs. But the materials within the mattresses themselves are useful and from what I have seen, effective when it comes to transporting large goods.

Another piece of material other companies have been using to ensure proper transportation is wooden packing supplies. These supplies are smart and work as wooden side slots with padding on the outer side to ensure that when the wood bounces against each other, they do not damage the packing supplies itself. It’s also working well because it ensures that there isn’t much space between the actual supplies and materials themselves. I love this idea and I believe it is relatively inexpensive to purchase in bulk too.

It’s annoying as a business owner to be angry or annoyed at other business owners since we are supposed to be professional, but at times it’s difficult not to be. I feel like with my own carpenter London business, I am the utmost professional and responsible when it comes to business and my customers. When I feel like other companies, especially companies that I work with lack that same work ethic that I have, it doesn’t always upset me or even annoy me, but I still can’t find it within myself to let it go. Especially when companies that I am working with make mistakes with me while working together. Since this blog has always been about packaging companies and their failure to always properly package my supplies together after ordering, I’m pretty sure you could guess who I am talking about!

It is frustrating when you work with companies that refuse to do their job correctly. Many people think that it is about not doing their job to my satisfaction, and it is in a way. By that, I mean that it would be entirely satisfactory to me if they decide to do their jobs to the absolute bare minimum they need to. I think that making sure peoples ordered supplies are not smashed together is a good way to do your job, and I don’t think it’s rude or warrants special attention to call out such behaviour. If you were to order a drone or a TV from amazon and it came to you smashed up and damaged, would you really be happy about that? Because I know that if I had ordered any items and it came damaged, I would blow a fucking gasket. Yet I have to deal with this every day when it comes to my business, making it that much more stressful.

One of the largest issues with bad packaging apart from the easy damages that can be occurred during transport is how easy it is for items to be lost during transport. Since the items that are packaged by brown paper packaging is generally quite loose, some of the smaller materials or items that you order can just fall under more important equipment or even out of the packing completely, making it impossible to tell if you haven’t been given something because it is still in the truck, or if it has fallen into larger materials. This makes the whole process of inventory once a large shipment has been delivered even more important, especially if you are ordering to be conservative rather than ordering as many pieces as you can.

When you order large amounts of screws or bolts with a shipment of scaffolding or even power tools, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is for the little things to just unravel and fall out of the packaging that it came in. It also makes it really annoying for people like us to then search out said pieces of the shipment that it had arrived in. I know this seems like a small annoyance to some, but when you are ordering 120 separate screws in different sizes and just one is lost, that means we must waste hours in the day to find the same said screw or purchase another again.

I am aware that many of the people that package these items are not necessarily aware of the flaws that exist within packaging supplies and orders that way. I do understand that they do not intentionally package orders to be inefficient on purpose. But it does cause issues for people who are ordering said items, because we are the ones who must deal with the inefficiencies.

Another really bad experience I have had with suppliers using the brown paper packaging was when we ordered a shipment of materials from a company based in Liverpool. I don’t like to name companies when discussing disappointing or bad experiences, but this specific company really let us down with the delivery. Rather than stuffing all extra space with the brown paper packing, they simply wrapped all materials once. As you can imagine, there was a lot of extra space within the truck upon delivery, so all materials including lumber and metal were slamming into each other throughout the night.

As you can imagine, the damage to all the raw materials meant that most of the delivery was a write up. The worst of the damage meant that the materials were broken off entirely, and at best the damaged materials meant that they were bent or dented out of shape and were unsafe to install within the home. It’s easy for builders to imagine the potential damage to a home if you install broken or out of shape materials within the foundation of a home, and I can’t imagine it is difficult for the average person to understand the potential dangers.

When you improperly pack materials that are meant for the foundations of a home, you are essentially writing off the materials altogether, or you are writing off the construction project itself. If you are using broken lumber or metal foundations and fill a loft conversion with said materials, it would not be uncommon for the same loft to collapse within itself. That is how disastrous it can be to not safely pack away raw materials for use. There are many companies that are using this practice, and I personally believe it is out of ignorance rather than intentionally being cheap at the cost of builders, but the practice needs to stop.

As a builder who specialises in loft conversions in Leeds, one of the most important things about the materials and equipment that we use are the way they are packaged. Often, our suppliers are 100 – 500 miles away from us, and we pay thousands for the correct materials to ensure that they are suitable for the home owner and more importantly, safe. That is why it is important these raw materials and tools are supplied and delivered to us in the best way possible. While it may sound unrealistic and even an over-exaggeration, the smallest bit of dent or tear on a piece of lumber can make the difference of a home standing for an extra 10 years. What inspired me (or rather, pushed me) to create this blog was when I received a supply of lumber that was particularly poorly packaged.

The materials and lumber itself was packaged heavily within that brown paper package that some suppliers use. I am unsure of the name for it, but it is that large stuffing paper that shoe stores used to stuff in shoes to ensure that they were formed and stood correctly. The thing about these papers are, they are extremely good at condensing what they are meant to be packaging and can ensure that the materials are kept near exactly where they are supposed to be. The issue with the same materials is that they tear very easily depending on what materials you have ordered. So, when we decided to order scaffold poles with the lumber, the scaffold poles had torn a large section of the packaging, creating an entrance for the lumber and poles to practically smash into each other throughout the delivery process. This had splinted the lumber and mean that we had to carry out an entirely new order. However, this isn’t the only problem I have had with the material. Please check in next post to find out the next stupid story!